Alexandra Instituttet

Getting IT research out of the lab and into use

Alexandra Instituttet, called the Alexandra Institute in English, has worked since 1999 as an impartial digital innovation partner. Its stated mission is to bring the results of IT research to market through partnerships and joint projects with universities and companies. Over those years the institute reports working with more than a thousand public and private organisations develop data-driven products and services that support sustainable growth and societal wellbeing.

A status granted by the state, run on market terms

The institute describes itself as a research and technology organisation that the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science has assigned to transfer IT knowledge to industry. At the same time it is a private company operating on market terms. Any profit is put back into new IT research, which it says leads to sustainable digital products and services, good jobs and answers to social challenges.

A mixed team of about a hundred experts

The institute puts its team at around one hundred experts, and calls them impartial. The mix covers IT specialists, anthropologists, designers and business developers, because, it argues, most successful IT projects come out of interdisciplinary teams that work with the users. About half of the working time of its experts goes to research and development projects, many of them run with universities. That means a client may find that the institute already knows of a solution to its problem, and can save the effort of building software components or testing new technologies and methods itself.

Where the research is applied

The work is organized into six areas:

• Digital green transition
• Artificial intelligence
• Cybersecurity
• Digital health
• Computer graphics, vision and simulation
• IoT and smart products

The questions clients bring are often basic ones: where to start, and how to make sure a new technology is adopted by the organisation and brings value to its users.

Choosing how involved the institute becomes

Clients set the level of the institute's involvement using three named options: Assist IT, Mix IT and Fix IT. They range from advising the client's own team, through working side by side, to the institute carrying out the work itself. The team is assembled for the client from the first day of the project.